Personal Constructs of Body-Mind Identity in Persons Who Experience Medically Unexplained

136 Pages·2017·2.95 MB·English

Portfolio Volume 1: Major Research Project

Personal Constructs of Body-Mind Identity
in Persons Who Experience Medically
Unexplained Symptoms (MUS)

Tom Sanders
June 2017

Submitted to the University of Hertfordshire in partial
fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor
of Clinical Psychology
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Contents
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………………………2
1. Introduction
Medically Unexplained Symptoms: An Overview…………………………………………….3
Clinical Epistemology……………………………………………………………………………………….7
Personal Construct Psychology and the self……………………………………………………12
Threats to self-construing and symptom formation……………………………………….13
2. Literature Review
Overview of search strategy and literature reviewed…………………………………….16
Conceptualizations of ‘self’ and ‘identity’ in literature…………………………………..18
Themes relating to identity in qualitative and quantitative literature…………….21
Summary of research findings and gaps in the existing literature…………………..29

3. Hypotheses for the current research project……………………………………………31
4. Method
Design, participant-criteria and sample size calculation………………………………….34
Measures
Description of Repertory Grid procedure and key indices……………..............35
Descriptions of additional measures………………………………………………………….42
Procedure………………………………………………………………………………………………………43
Ethical considerations…………………………………………………………………………………….43
Service-user involvement……………………………………………………………………………….44

5. Findings
Sample characteristics and descriptive statistics…………………………………………...44
Findings relating to study hypotheses……………………………………………………………51
Additional explorations of study data…………………………………………………………….60
Summary table of key findings……………………………………………………………………….70
6. Discussion
Discussion of key findings………………………………………………………………………………71
Clinical recommendations……………………………………………………………………………..83
Critical review………………………………………………………………………………………………..85

7. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………...88

References………………………………………………………………………………………………….90
Appendices………………………………………………………………………………………………...102
Glossary of key terms………………………………………………………………………………….134

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Abstract
Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS) are bodily symptoms for which no organic cause has been
identified, and which result in significant levels of psychological distress and functional impairment.
MUS are thought to be highly prevalent in primary care settings, and have considerable costs to
society. Despite evidence of overlapping psychological and physical presentations, MUS are not well
understood or treated in culture that predominantly views the body through the lenses of dualism
and mechanistic reductionism. An alternative ‘interactive’ view of the body as playing a more
dynamic role is elaborated through George Kelly’s (1955) Personal Construct Psychology. The author
draws upon Lin & Payne’s (2014) ‘frozen construing’ theory, and empirical literature on relationships
between identity and MUS, to suggest that for people with MUS, the symptomatic body is
distressing because the person is struggling to integrate its meaning with their identity. It is
hypothesized that embodied processes, that may actually protect the self (and others who share a
construct system with that person) from events which threaten to dramatically alter how the self is
construed, are difficult to understand because of their preverbal nature. Hence symptoms , and the
body itself , are dissociated from the person’s more elaborated verbal self-constructions . Several
hypotheses relating to this suggestion were tested using a modified form of the repertory grid
technique that was designed to explore construct systems of both mind and body, for self and
others. Twenty participants with MUS, recruited from the community, completed the repertory grid
interviews and measures of depression, anxiety and symptom severity , which were correlated with
relevant repertory grid indices to test hypotheses. Findings indicated that symptom constructs,
contrary to expectations, were well integrated into participants’ construct systems. The alleviation
of psychological distress was significantly associated with increased perceived distance between the
self in general and the self when symptoms are worst (a relationship which appeared to be
independent of severity of symptoms), providing evidence of a process of dissociation that protected
the current self from assimilating the undesirable characteristics that were associated with the
symptom. The way in which the self when symptoms are wor st is construed appeared to influence
levels of distress, with more predictive power than several other indices . The study also found
evidence for some participants of hypothesized relationships between desired aspects of the current
self and symptoms, tha t would imply that symptom disappearance would actually threaten a
desirable aspect of how the self is construed . Content analysis of these constructs revealed (as
predicted) that such desirable aspects of self tended to relate to being responsible and sensitive to
the needs of others, and were elaborated through bodily constructs in a way that suggested that
they were not well integrated with the primary ways that these participants made sen se of their
identity. For these particular participants, discrepancies between the ideals that they had for
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themselves, and how they would like to be seen by others, were associated with increased
depression. Several participants were identified whose constructions of self and others were
dominated by constructs relating to both mental and physical strength and weakness. These
participants appeared to be struggling to find coherent meaning for themselves as the result of
symptoms, which were regarded as invalidating a pre-symptom construal of themselves as being
‘strong’. There seemed to be a continuum of being a ‘body for others’ on the one hand, a previously
‘strong person’ on the other, and a person who is ‘strong for others’ in the middle. Implications for
clinical practice are discussed. Although the findings of the current study are limited by a small
sample size, it appears that exploring the meaning of the body in the construction of self helps to
elaborate the meaning of the body and symptoms in a verbal, expressible form. This process is likely
to be helpful to those who struggle to find meanings for their symptoms both in their own construct
systems and in a society that objectifies the body.

1. Introduction
Medically unexplained symptoms: an overview
'Medically unexplained symptoms' (MUS) is a term describing persistent bodily complaints which are
distressing and impair an individual's functioning (Payne & Stott, 2010), and for which tests and
investigations have not been able to reveal explanatory organic pathology ( Chitnis, Dowrick, Byng, et
al., 2014). Though these physical symptoms are often distinguished from bodily complaints which
have an identified etiology, the y "can be as real and debilitating as any associated with organic
disease" (Brown, 2013, p. 868).
The term 'MUS' covers a range of symptoms including functional disturbance of organs or body
parts, pain, discomfort, or fatigue. People who experience MUS may be frequent attenders in
primary care settings and present within various specialist branches of secondary-care medicine.
Many unexplained symptoms are labelled as 'syndromes' or 'disorders' within different specialties,
rather than being labelled as 'MUS'.
Overlaps and comorbidity between MUS labels make obtaining precise data difficult (Wyller, 2007).
However, MUS are considered to be among the most common complaints in UK primary care
(Kirmayer & Taillefer, 1997; Kroenke, 2003), with at least as many as one third, and perhaps as many
as half, of symptoms having no organic explanation (Barsky & Borus, 1995; Kroenke & Mangelsdorff,
1989; Morriss, Dowrick & Salmon, 2007). Given that General Practitioners (GPs) rarely use terms
such as 'MUS' or related labels, and display considerable reluctance to do so (Dimsdale, Sharma &
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Sharpe, 2011), the number of primary care patients with MUS may be underestimated (Payne &
Brooks, 2016).
People who experience MUS often experience psychological distress, including anxiety and
depression (Edwards, Stern, Clarke et al., 2010; Payne, 2009; Smith et al., 2005), and at least half of
patients seeking psychological help in the UK may have MUS (Hague, 2005). However, MUS is not
always comorbid with psychiatric diagnoses such as anxiety disorders or depression. Research has
suggested that, contrary to the assumptions of some practitioners, this psychological distress cannot
be accounted for as a straightforward consequence of experiencing unwanted bodily symptoms, nor
are physical symptoms simply the unrecognized somatic counterparts of anxiety or depression
(Hennigson et al., 2003; Kirmayer & Robbins, 1991).
Known risk factors for MUS include being female, being younger, and being unemployed (Hotopf et
al., 1999). Histories of childhood abuse and adversity/trauma (e.g. Drossman et al.,1995; Kirmayer &
Robbins, 1996; Roelofs & Spinhoven, 2007; Spitzer, Barnow, Gau et al., 2008; Waitzkin & Magana,
1997), past or current family dysfunction (Dwamena, Lyles, Frankel et al., 2009), and avoidant and
fearful attachments to caregivers (Ciechanowski et al., 2002; Noyes et al., 2003; Stuart & Noyes,
1999; Spertus et al., 2003; Taylor et al., 2000) are commonly found amongst populations with MUS.
Studies by Waldinger et al. (2006) and Anderson, Elkit & Brink (2013) have attempted to draw these
factors together, suggesting that insecure attachment styles may mediate the relationship between
trauma and adverse life events on the one hand, and the development of persistent physical
symptoms on the other.
'A clinical and social predicament'
The overlap of psychological and physical symptoms, and complex etiological factors found with
MUS invites an integrated psychological and medical treatment approach (Joint Commissioning
Panel for Mental Health/JCPMH, 2016). However, in a society whose thinking is characterized by the
dualistic separation of mind and body, and by implication mental and physical illness, integrated
treatment pathways for MUS are lacking (JCPMH, 2016).
Bodily symptoms are usually attributed by patients to physical causes rather than psychosocial
factors (Nimnuan, Hotopf & Wessely, 2001). When tests are sought and come back negative, such
patients report feeling that their concerns are not taken seriously, as they receive the message that
'nothing is wrong' physically from their doctors (Edwards et al., 2010). Needs for emotional support
are often overlooked within the powerful medical idiom and its focus on physical symptoms, despite
evidence that patients often wish to discuss such factors (Salmon, Ring, Dowrick & Humphris, 2005).
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The process of extensive testing to find the cause of the symptom, and prescription of procedures
such as epidural injections (for pain) to 'rule out' certain diagnoses, may subject patients to
unnecessarily invasive and potentially tissue-damaging procedures (Salmon et al., 2005).
Prescription of medications for symptom alleviation, or antidepressants for comorbid psychological
symptoms (Burton, 2003) may lead to addiction or long-term side-effects that persist after
discontinuation (Carvahlo et al., 2016), presenting the possibility of further somatic symptoms in
addition to those which the patient initially presented with.
Relationships with professionals, usually the patient's General Practitioner (GP), are often strained,
with feelings of rejection and undermined confidence from patients (Salmon, Peters & Stanley,
1999), and feelings of frustration, lack of control, inadequacy and negativity towards patients from
doctors (Hahn et al., 1994; Stone, 2014; Wileman, May & Chew-Graham, 2002). Options available to
GPs such as reassurance about the non -seriousness of the symptom (Olde-Hartman, Hassink-Franke,
Lucassen et al., 2009) or attempting to encourage patients to 'reattribute' their sym ptoms to
broader psychosocial factors (Gask & Goldberg, 1989) have limited evidence of effectiveness
(Blanchard & Scharff, 2002; Morriss, Dowrick, Salmon et al., 2007; Sumathipala, 2007; Witthoft &
Hiller, 2010). It also appears that GPs do not feel adequately trained in such approaches (Yon et al.,
2015), or experience them to be over -simplistic given the complexities of the patients they see
(Gask, Dowrick, Salmon et al., 2011).

Though this rarely happens (Department of Health, 2014), patients may be referred to psychological
therapies for support with distress. Due to the dualistic structure of mainstream healthcare, these
are mostly provided within mental health settings such as Improving Access to Psychological
Therapies (IAPT) services. They are often presented as alternatives when other treatments have
failed, with the goal of managing symptoms and quality of life rather than trying to remove
symptoms (Eccleston, Williams & Morley, 2012). Psychological therapies for MUS range from verbal
forms such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for altering thoughts and addressing the
misinterpretation of abnormal body exper iences (Rief & Broadbent, 2007); to nonverbal therapies,
which encourage patients to make connections between psychological and bodily processes which
may be difficult to verbalize (Payne, 2009). Despite good evidence for the efficacy of both verbal and
nonverbal forms of psychological therapies (Kroenke, 2009; Payne 2009), a major confounding factor
in evaluating the real-world effectiveness of psychological approaches is that many of these studies
include participants who have already accepted a referral to mental health services. This represents
a small fraction of MUS patients (DH, 2014): according to research by Allen, Woolfolk et al. (2010),
50-80% of patients may not even attend their first appointments when referred tom ental health
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settings. For many who experience MUS, receiving treatment within a mental health setting is not
acceptable due to the stigma attached to such services and their own physical explanations for
symptoms (Raine et al. 2002). Indeed, even if psychological treatments are accepted, there is little
evidence to show that this leads to a reduction in utilization of healthcare services, which would be
considered a major outcome of such treatments (Eccleston, Williams & Morley, 2012).
The costs of MUS to society are considerable for a combination of reasons mentioned above. High
levels of anxiety about the symptom and high healthcare utilization from patients, costly referrals to
secondary care for extensive testing (e.g. expensive MRI scans), and ineffective and prolonged
treatments are all factors adding up to expensive healthcare costs. One estimate by Bermingham et
al. (2010) suggests that up to £3 million is spent annually on healthcare for working age adults who
experience MUS. The additional societal costs from sickness absence and quality of life factors mean
that MUS may cost the economy up to £14 million per year (Bermingham et al., 2010). It is no
surprise that, given the cost implications of the current misunderstanding and mistreatment of those
who experience MUS, Edwards et al. (2010) considered MUS to be 'a clinical and social predicament'
(p.1).
Naming the predicament as 'Medically Unexplained Symptoms'
As mentioned already, 'MUS' does not represent a diagnostic category but a term representing a
complex of persistent bodily symptoms which are associated with significant distress and
impairment, and for which medical investigations fail to reveal an organic pathology.
The term 'MUS' has many limitations. For example, it may be taken to imply that there is no
physiological component at all relating to symptom experience, which is inaccurate (Brown, 2007).
As a negative label (i.e. defines symptoms by what they are not), it is generally less acceptable to
patients than the range of labels used by medical specialties (e.g. 'irritable bowel syndrome') to
positively classify the presence of certain criteria (Stone et al., 2002). It may also be taken by
clinicians to mean that 'MUS' can only be used when organic causes have been absolutely ruled out,
which drives a process of unnecessary and costly testing when it may be more helpful to focus on
supporting the emotional wellbeing of patients (Creed, 2009; Creed et al, 2010, 2011).
The term 'MUS' has recently been replaced in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual with
'Somatic Symptoms and Related Disorders' (SSD) (DSM-V, 2013). SSD is diagnosed when there are
bodily symptoms which are distressing to the individual or result in significant disruption in thoughts,
feelings or behaviour. Notably, this diagnosis may apply to bodily symptoms with a known
pathology, as well as to those which have not been explained medically. Although the positive
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characterization of the distress is well-intentioned, reducing reliance on organic pathology for
diagnosis appears to have resulted in the over-'psychologization' of criteria (Crane & Patterson,
2012; Pinching, 2003), bypassing the issue that patients experience their symptoms as being
inherently bodily. It also appears to invalidate the fact that the lack of explanation, and therefore the
lack of meaning for symptoms, is an inherent part of the distress experienced.
In a wider culture which separates mind and body, Western society relies heavily on the idiom of
'medical explanation' and 'identifying the disease/pathology' when it comes to alleviating bodily
suffering. When symptoms do not follow this usual 'medical story', patients are threatened with
invalidation and a lack of meaning for their symptom (Nettleton et al., 2005). The predicament of
trying (and failing) to find meaning for symptoms, and therefore to legitimize suffering in a society
which expects illness to correlate to disease, is not merely the patient's predicament, nor one within
the doctor-patient relationship, but one that percolates throughout wider healthcare and societal
contexts (Nettleton et al., 2005). To the author, 'SSD' as a construct ignores the gravity of this
predicament by providing a pos itive but overly psychological account of patients' suffering.
'Medically unexplained symptoms' names a predicament that applies not only to the individual
patient, but is also framed within the assumptions and viewpoints of Western Society that have
inextricably become a part of the definition of the clinical problem of ‘MUS’. The next section aims
to make this current, problematic 'clinical epistemology' (Keeney, 198 2; O'Hanlon & Wilk, 1987)
more explicit, and present an alternative way of looking at embo died experience which attempts to
understand symptom experience as an irreducibly personal phenomenon.
Clinical Epistemology
“The question of the integration of the mind/body in action is the most practical of all questions we
can ask of our civilisation. Until this integration is effected in the only place where it can be carried
out, in action itself, we shall continue to live in a society in which a soulless and heartless
materialism is compensated for by a soulful but futile idealism and spiritualism. ” (Dewey, 1931, p .
304)

This section attempts to bring into greater contrast the epistemological foundations upon which the
predominant (mis)understanding of MUS has been built. As mentioned above, the predominance of
dualistic thinking in our culture has led in turn to the view that the body is separate to the mind, and
that bodily symptoms have a physical cause. The idea of body and mind being separate entities has
been challenged by the biopsychosocial paradigm, which has supposed that the biological,
psychological and social levels interact with one another causally, and may share overlapping
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mechanisms (e.g. McWhinney, 1972). However, even if mind and body can be seen to interact
through overlapping mechanisms, there remains a dualism which is experienced between mind and
body, and between subject and object, which turns within the wider cog-wheels of positivism and
realism (Barfield, 1957).
There is a dominant view that there is 'one true and complete description of the way the world is'
(Putnam, 1981, p. 49), independent of the distinctions made by perceivers. Reality is pictured as
consisting of stratified levels of 'types' of phenomena which are all mechanistically connected to one
another in a single causal nexus, glued together like stratified layers of a coastal shelf or pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle (Kelly, 1955). This 'objective thinking' (Merleau-Ponty, 1944/1962) has characterized
attempts by natural sciences to map causal connections between these layers of reality, predicting
and controlling relationships between measurable 'objects' and phenomena external to the
perceiver. This paradigm transcends the everyday distinctions and experiences of the perceiver to
‘discover’ causal mechanisms with explanatory power (Butt, 2004; Strawson, 1963). Objective
thought transforms the experiencing person into structures and entities within the person, including
the 'mind' (reified in mechanistic parts of the mind including 'representations', 'processes',
'cognitions', 'beliefs', 'the superego', etc.) and 'body' (described using concepts belonging to the
natural sciences), which are thought to represent distinct levels or mechanisms existing in reality.
Given the successes of prediction and control in the natural sciences, the concepts employed by
these sciences such as 'matter', 'energy' and 'particles' (notably, none of the things which anyone
has directly 'experienced') may be regarded as corresponding to 'how the world really is', rather
than representing constructs which have aided in the process of prediction and control of the world
around us (Barfield, 1977). The consequence of viewing reality as ultimately physical in nature is that
the subjective mind, or self-consciousness, is seen to constitute a retracted, isolated sphere or level
of reality, separate from the 'world out there' in a subject-object divide. Subjective experience is a
level of reality to be accounted for by the lower level physical phenomena, if it is to be considered
'real'.
Contemporary medicine may be seen to adopt such objective thinking in its attempt to transcend
‘symptoms’ as subjectively experienced by the patient in order to problem-solve the mechanistic
aspects of ‘illness’ in the body (Obissier, 2006, pp2-4). Symptoms are the tip of reality’s hierarchical
iceberg, leading to the root cause, the ‘real illness’. Symptoms are regarded as the ‘symptoms of
disease’, and this ‘of’ becomes very important within the lens of prediction and control – different
diseases predict different futures (Harre, 1991). Parts of the body, whether pathogen invaders,
mutated cells or broken bones, are viewed as objects to be controlled (Obissier, 2006, p.4), and
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because these are regarded as underlying illness experience, the subjective experience of symptoms
takes second-place in the hierarchy of knowledge.
This reductionist, mechanistic view of the body resonates through the stories of those who
experience MUS. If symptoms cannot be reified by finding a disease process, their reality is
questioned, or otherwise thought to belong to a pathological level that is psychological in nature.
There may be causal connections between symptoms, but the idea of the reality of the symptom
being something apart from the experiences of the patient is difficult to shrug off.
Psychological theorizations about MUS have tended to regard physical symptoms as being 'produced
by' psychological mechanisms for coping with traumatic experiences (i.e. 'dissociation and
conversion theories' (Breuer & Freud, 1957; Brown, 2004; Janet, 1907)), or alternatively, have
suggested that physical symptoms caused by 'actual physical injury' or illness are maintained and
exacerbated by cognitive processes which either ‘misinterpret’ benign bodily sensations as being
more severe (Deary et al., 2007), or that having certain cognitions means that the necessary steps
for managing symptoms are not taken (Hou, Moss-Morris, Moss-Morris, Spence & Hou, 2011;
Peveler et al., 2011; Spence & Moss-Morris, 2007).
Notably, the body, described physiologically as an object belonging to the 'physical' realm, plays a
rather passive role in these accounts, which implicitly reinforce the medical message that ‘nothing is
really wrong with the body’. Physical symptoms are either produced by psychological processes (the
pathology), or psychological processes incorrectly interpret the meaning of physical symptoms, so
that pathology is again heavily characterized as ‘psychological’ or 'subjective' in nature. For the
person who experiences the symptom in their body, they must accept the psychological 'reality'
presumed to underlie their symptoms, or otherwise fail to have their experience validated .
In both psychological and physical medicine, the 'subjective' experience of distressing bodily
symptoms is accounted for by referenc e to a description of interacting mechanisms which are
described in almost exclusively psychological or physical terms. The notion of the 'person' as an
individual identity with an embodied, idiosyncratic perspective in the world is almost entirely absent
from these accounts. For the person who has unwelcome and unwanted experiences of their body,
such dualistic accounts offer little hope of validation of their experiences.
An alternative viewpoint: an 'interactive' epistemology
As outlined above, integrat ing mind and body in terms of 'mechanism' fails to do justice to the
experiences of the individual person – mostly because it does not appear to shift away from the idea
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